Vivyan
The quilt smelled like him.
I had not expected that. I'd folded it into the passenger seat of my car the way you'd buckle in a child, and for the first hour of driving I kept my eyes on the road and my breath shallow. But somewhere past the county line the cab warmed up, and the scent rose out of the stitches: cedar, woodsmoke, the faint soap Lowen had used for three years. A hundred tiny hours of my life, sewn from his old shirts. And she had slept under it. Her hair had been on that pillow.
I pulled onto a gravel turnout and sat with the engine ticking, my forehead against the steering wheel, until the shaking stopped.
Taking what's mine, I'd said, in that sunroom, with my chin up. It had felt magnificent for about nine seconds.
Now it felt like what it was: a woman in a borr
